Goodreads Description: Pageboy is a groundbreaking coming-of-age memoir from the Academy Award-nominated actor Elliot Page. A generation-defining actor and one of the most famous trans advocates of our time, Elliot will now be known as an uncommon literary talent, as he shares never-before-heard details and intimate interrogations on gender, love, mental health, relationships, and Hollywood.
My Review: First off, I've been a fan of Elliot Page since I saw Hard Candy as an edgy teen, and as a trans person myself, I'm in full support of Page's politics -- trans rights are human rights, baby. But this book was terrible. It was worse than terrible, it was barely even a book. It's not often that I give one star reviews, since I can usually find positives in any book I read. However, Pageboy is disorganized, poorly written, and fails to provide nuanced insights into the trans experience. It often reads like a teenager's diary that focuses more on Page's pain than deriving a message from it that would be useful to anyone but him.
The disorganization and lack of clear narrative was especially aggravating, because it felt like Page was prioritizing the "artistry" of his book over coherence, i.e., he makes no attempt to ground you in a timeline, or even the scene itself. The book routinely meanders from subject to subject in naval-gazing monologues; Page will start a paragraph discussing one event, but quickly name at least five other incidents based on a similar theme. While he's trying to link these incidents together, he focuses more on artfully describing details rather than connecting them in a meaningful way. It often felt like Page was trying to be James Joyce without understanding how Joyce's writing style worked. It's easy to compare this to Jeanette McCurdy's memoir, because even though she jumps around in the timeline, she grounds readers in a tangible scene and leaves enough clues so we know where we are in her life. Pageboy makes no such attempts.
Not only is the book confusing as hell, but it fails to articulate anything meaningful about transgender people. The book tries to be both political and personal by using Page's experiences to justify the necessity of transgender rights, yet there's a disconnect between the stories he's telling and the messages he's trying to impart. It all feels inauthentic and contrived. It seems like Page chose messages he wanted to impart and then found a moment from his past that kind of fits that message, rather than showing how his life experiences caused him to learn those lessons. Because of that, we get a story from Page's past with a ham-fisted moral at the end that doesn't fully fit. Page has moments where he authentically shows how being trans has shaped his life, but these moments are fleeting and don't connect to form a bigger picture. Because of this, the messaging is as disorganized as the narrative. As a trans person, I know my way around the queer watercooler, yet I still found it difficult to understand what exactly Page was trying to say. If someone who is well-versed in trans politics has a hard time understanding the message, then it's unlikely that people with little to no experience with the trans community will be able to take anything meaningful away from this book.
All in all, not worth it. This was such a terrible reading experience that I can't recommend this to anyone, unfortunately.
TL;DR: 1/5 stars. A disorganized recollection that lacks substance and coherency.
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